★Bureau B
Consequenz
Commercial Schnitzler? How quickly, how prematurely are opinions and judgements bandied about when an artist suddenly changes the form of his work. Conrad Schnitzler fell under such a cloud when, after 1978, his songs, for a time at least, did not exceed the catchy compactness of pop songs, while their harmonies and rhythms seemed to be drifting towards pop. Produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Dream) the Con (1978) album and the Auf dem schwarzen Kanal 12" EP (1980) ushered in this phase, …
Produkt der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft
Bureau B reissues the first Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft album, originally released in 1979. True D.A.F. connoisseurs will, of course, be aware of the early phase of the Düsseldorf-Wuppertal combo. But most fans of the subsequently world-famous duo may well be taken aback when confronted with their debut album: forceful synth bass sounds, snappy rhythms, Gabi Delgado and leather all conspicuously absent. In their place, pure instrumental, unstructured noise-rock, played by long-haire…
Normalette Surprise
180 gram LP version. 1980 the zeitgeist played into the right hands. And who held the aces? In Bureau B's game, Moritz R®, Frank Fenstermacher and Pyrolator aka Der Plan. Tired of convention and full of enthusiasm, they encountered an audience who felt just the same. And with record companies too ponderous to sign up Der Plan, the wonderful Ata Tak label was born of necessity. Normalette Surprise is the second album by Der Plan, released in 1981, a good year after their Geri Reig debut. It i…
Uberfallig
180 gram LP version. Bureau B reissues Günter Schickert's album Überfällig, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. "No sooner had electronic music broken through in Germany, principally aligned in the two schools of Düsseldorf and Berlin, than Günter Schickert also began his first musical experiments. Although GAM, the group he founded in 1973, did not then release a record, he did issue his first solo effort, Samtvogel, a year later -- an album which was eagerly snapped up and re-rele…
Klopfzeichen
180 gram vinyl version. Imagine finding a message in a bottle, forty years after it was dispatched. That is what it feels like when you listen to Kluster's Klopfzeichen for the first time, mysterious, hard to decipher, a relic of a time long since passed. The handwriting is archaic, barely legible, the complex contents only falling into place when examined through the light of historical context. Klopfzeichen is an incredibly important release for the time in which it appeared (1971), an …
Geri Reig
Geri Reig is Der Plan's debut album (originally released in 1980), but not their first release. An EP, recorded with the aid of an Electric Memo dictation preceded Geri Reig. But the band is not very keen on reissuing this early work. Why did they call themselves "Der Plan," actually? "A concept which has something to do with the capacity of people to think and shape their future" as Plan member Moritz Reichelt, alias Moritz R®, once explained. Der Plan at that time comprised Moritz Reichel…
Zwei-Osterei
180 gram vinyl version. Zwei Osterei is the second half of a recording session which took place on a single day in November 1970. Klopfzeichen is the first part. Yet the uncompromising Zwei Osterei surpasses the earlier Klopfzeichen album by some distance in terms of its harsh noisiness and near brutal sonic attacks. Everything that was left of the revolutionary verve of the late 1960s seems to have been distilled into this music with a burning glass: aesthetic destruction to liberate the mind a…
Moebius + Tietchens
With Asmus Tietchens and Dieter Moebius, two artists counting among the greats of German avant-garde electronic music have come together. Both have been active for well over 30 years: Moebius (since 1970) as a member of Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia, as well as solo and in numerous collaborations (Brian Eno, Mani Neumeier, Conny Plank, Mayo Thompson and many more), and Tietchens (since 1979) almost exclusively as a solo artist, beginning in the fields of electronic music and musique concrète…
Freedom Of Speech
The second album of the Phantom Band is quite different to the predecessor. The line-up features the spoken word performer Sheldon Ancel on the microphone instead of bass player Rosko Gee. Whilst the debut album revealed many Caribbean or African influences and a generally positive frame of mind, "Freedom of Speech" is a somewhat darker avant-garde rock manifesto, interspersed with individual dub or reggae pieces. All they have in common are Jaki Liebezeit's inimitable monotone polyrhythm…
Phantom Band
The first band of Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit after Can split up in 1979. The first line-up (1980) included top musicians such as Helmut Zerlett (e.g. Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases), Rosko Gee (Traffic, Can), Dominik von Senger (e.g. Damo Suzuki Band, Dunkelziffer), Olek Gelba, and Holger Czukay (Can) as guest musician. The Phantom Band mixes Can-style monotonic polyrhythms with afrobeat, funk, jazz, disco, reggae, and dub. A nearly forgotten exciting musical experience! Release date: March …
Inland
Pyrolator is the co-founder of the legendary German label and publisher Ata Tak, was a member of various seminal post-punk bands such as D.A.F. and Der Plan and released solo albums under his artist name from 1979 onwards until today. His debut album "Inland" from 1979 features cold, urbane, disconcerting synthesizer sounds and aural collages, imbued with the post-punk/industrial zeitgeist as the seventies segued into the eighties. Yet sounding so fresh, it might have been recorded …
Ausland
Just two years separate Pyrolator's 1979 debut Inland and the 1981 album Ausland. Nevertheless, they could hardly be more different from one another. If Inland reflects the industrial decay and politically-explosive atmosphere of 1977 and the years thereafter in the Federal Republic of Germany, then Ausland is a buoyant, playful and yet groundbreaking pop album. There had been some significant developments since 1979. The Ata Tak label, which Pyrolator had co-founded, had hit a rich vein of…
Blau
P version on 180 gram vinyl. On the Red Album Rot, Conrad Schnitzler laid down the direction his musical artistry would take. His second solo , The Blue Album Blau, originally released in 1974, offered confirmation of his intent. Maybe the "Red" and "Blue" tracks were recorded in the same session. The structure, sound and timbre of both LPs are so similar as to suggest that this was the case (an unverified assumption nevertheless!). Far more important than this historical pedantry is the fa…
Rot
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. There was a particular type of artist who could only have emerged in the legendary early 1970s. Few musicians fit the bill better than Conrad Schnitzler (Tangerine Dream, Kluster). Revolution, pop art and Fluxus created a climate which engendered unbridled artistic and social development. Radical utopias, excessive experimentation with drugs, ruthless (in a positive way) transgression of aesthetic frontiers were characteristic of the period. The magic words were "su…
Antworten
180 gram LP version with free download code. "Antworten (meaning: answer) is the third installment in a trilogy of Qluster music, following on from the Fragen (BB 076CD/LP) (meaning: question) and Rufen (BB 075CD/LP) (meaning: call) studio albums. The fact that the music on Antworten was created before Rufen and Fragen were recorded is less of a paradox than it might at first appear. For the expansive piano fantasies of their 2007 recordings had already provided a clear answer to the two musicia…
Piano Piano
Bureau B reissues Piano Piano by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1991 on the Italian label Materiali Sonori. In classical music, "pp" (piano piano = pianissimo) is a dynamic indication of particularly soft music. And Piano Piano is a very soft, quiet album. Roedelius assumes the role of a fairytale character with his piano music, transported to a strange, fantastical landscape where, filled with awe and amazement, he tries to get his bearings. What he see…
Selbstportrait - Vol. II
This is the fourth solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1980 on Sky Records. With Selbstportrait, Roedelius gave unequivocal confirmation that he no longer was treading the hitherto common paths of electronic music. Selbstportrait - Vol. II corroborated the findings: for Roedelius, electronics would no longer be a means of creating abstract, noise-like music in the future, nor of generating utopian, mechanical rhythmic structures. His own utopia was …
Selbstportrait
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. This is the third solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. Alongside his ongoing work with Cluster and Harmonia, Roedelius amassed an almost incalculable number of musical notations during his time in the idyllic Weser Uplands. Fleeting sketches, spontaneous improvisations, implied miniatures, rough compositions -- Roedelius recorded virtually every idea he came up with outside the studio sessions on h…
Lustwandel
180 gram LP version. The third studio album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released by Sky Records in 1981, fulfilled a dream he had long cherished. A series of chamber music pieces, with grand piano solos taking center stage in some places, archaised percussion patterns in others. Lustwandel represents a logical progression, following on from Jardin Au Fou (re-released on Bureau B in 2009). Both albums were recorded at Paragon Studios in 1979 and produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Drea…
The Diary Of The Unforgotten (Selbstportrait VI)
LP version. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. The Diary Of The Unforgotten is a collection of recordings from the years 1972 to 1978 and was first released in 1990 (with different artwork). Between the years of 1972 and 1978, Hans-Joachium Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, later joined by Michael Rother, lived out on a country estate in the idyllic, diminutive settlement of Forst in the Weser Uplands. It was here that the Harmonia albums, legendary recordings with Brian Eno and various splendid Cluster …